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A university library in Chillicothe is a long way from California's surf beaches, but that's where Allan Pollchik now calls home. In a third career, the Golden State native with a nontraditional background is helping transform the Ohio University branch library into a "learning commons."

Librarian rides a new wave -

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio -- Allan Pollchik's arms swoop in circles and stretch out in front of his crouched body as his entire being explains what it's like to be in the tube of a wave.

Then he's turning, showing how he'd do a "rollo" across the wave. And now his arm is poking into the wave and he's spinning across its face.

Ohio University students walking in and out of Pollchik's glassed-in office on the Chillicothe campus don't blink an eye at their library director's surfing simulations, an attempt to explain the rush he got when he surfed professionally more than 20 years ago during his previous lives as a psychologist and a high-powered fundraiser.

At 58, he likes to remind you that he was 18 in 1967, the "Summer of Love" -- in California, no less.

"You never fail to notice him as a surfer when he says things like 'groovy' and explains things with the symbolism of the ocean," said senior Brandon Houseman, a student library worker.

"He's broken the stereotypical view of the librarian," said senior Amy Newlun, a communications-studies major Pollchik has helped with research.

Starting only his third year as a librarian, Pollchik says this reinvention of himself is the best yet. His life has been shaped, in great part, by the 1960s and southern California. That's when he started surfing, as a teenager growing up in Anaheim and San Diego. Carrying a huge fiberglass board, he'd ride his thumb to the beach with friends ("middle-aged women, alone, would stop to pick us up") during the Surfin' USA days of the Beach Boys.

Being a surfer dude when he enrolled at UCLA was a good way to meet new people, "especially cute girls." He began to grow his curly dark hair into an Afro; when it was 2 inches long, he had his first brush with fame: To impress his fraternity brothers, he tried out for The Dating Game and became Bachelor No. 2.

He wooed and won and, after "The Date" (dinner and a show in San Francisco, with a chaperon) never saw the young woman again. But he became "Mr. Dating Game" on campus and girls flocked around; by the end of his sophomore year, he'd become "Mr. Party" and flunked out.

UCLA gave Pollchik a second chance -- with the proviso that he attend classes this time. He became enamored of psychology and, after graduation in 1971, headed to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., for four years and two doctorates in psychology, one in clinical and one in cognitive.

So began his first career, as a private-practice psychologist in San Diego. Soon, he was giving advice on the air, too, on a call-in radio show called Psychological Perspectives. Early morning, though, would find him on the beach, surfing.

Fast-forward 12 years. Pollchik wanted to help more people than he could reach with counseling. He gave up his practice and became a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations, using his persuasiveness to get people to donate money.

"It was really a career switch, doing what I'd been telling people to do when you need to, which is reinvent yourself. I was still Allan, the man who has to help people, but helping in a different manner."

He still surfed, pulling in sponsorships and appearing on television as he became more competitive. His passion was big waves, 30 feet tall, which meant traveling to Hawaii. But he also coached, winning the national championship with a team from Oak Crest Junior High.

Fast-forward again, to 1999. Pollchik married Romaine Newsome and left behind California and surfing to move to her hometown of Chillicothe. He taught psychology part time at the OU campus there and decided on a third career.

"I had a talk with myself and I said, 'Self, you should be a librarian.' I was just following my nature, which is to be a helper." Less than two years later, he got his master's degree in library science from Kent State University.

Patty Griffith, director of information and technology services at Ohio University in Chillicothe, concedes that Pollchik isn't "your traditional librarian" but says he's been the right person at the right time.

He was a temporary hire in 2005 when Griffith brought him in because both branch-campus librarians had left and fall quarter was looming. He was hired permanently as head librarian over more-experienced librarians in part because of his nontraditional background and in part because the library was being transformed into a "learning commons" with space for group work, cups of coffee and congregating.

"We wanted someone to help us move forward and embrace the technology and how our students work," Griffith said. "Allan reaches out to students; it's his biggest asset. He looks for puzzled looks."

Newlun calls him "the perfect person" to be head librarian now. "He is warm, inviting and brutally honest. He is a collaborator with the spirit of education -- very liberating."

High-walled cubicles used to hide the OU librarians from the students; Pollchik took those down so students could see him and ask questions.

"I've never seen him once shush anyone," Houseman said. "In fact, we've had to shush him a few times."

Pollchik is exuberant about his library life.

"If I could've made enough money at surfing, I'd have chosen that (as my favorite career), but I'd pick librarian next. As a psychologist, getting a little gratification takes weeks or months.

"Here, I sit down and help someone and I get that big smile from them and that's my gratification -- and it takes 15 minutes."